The broadcaster should not cave to Trump’s demands
Y
ou can’t be in the news business and avoid mistakes. That’s why responsible media organizations correct their errors and acknowledge them to the public. It’s why newsroom leaders take steps, internally, to repair broken processes. It’s why they sometimes go so far as to apologize or take stories down.
Some mistakes, of course, are worse than others. A misspelled name is one thing. Sustained coverage that is misleading or false is quite another. And there are plenty of gradations between those two poles.
The BBC’s error in a documentary film about Donald Trump was a serious one. During the editing, two clips of the president speaking to his riled-up crowd of followers in Washington were juxtaposed, even though there was nearly an hour between the two. The edited version could have made viewers believe Trump had made an unmistakable call for violence at the US Capitol that day. He did make inflammatory statements, of course, and he does bear significant responsibility for the riot at the Capitol that day, but he skirted the direct instruction that the film suggested.
